Xenite Reading Room

"Simply Connected" by Michael Martinez

Continued from "Simply Connected" page 3

"I don't understand how you use this metaphor-thing," Ralph said, taking a deep breath. He stood up so Jim could sit down in front of the monitor. Wat stared around at the shop.

"You made some changes since I been here last," he said.

"Let me show you the new switch boxes," Ralph said.

"Oboy." Jim was looking at Ralph's new metaphors. There were now nearly two dozen more in the system since Jim had gone upstairs, and Ralph had been quite innovative.

"Computer: List All Active Metaphors." It would be fastest to just ask the computer; he had added that one early on just in case something like this happened.

"Oh, I think I accidentally erased that one, Jim," Ralph said. "You know, it takes a while to get the hang of it."

"Right." Jim smiled at Deb's father. "No way to list the metaphors running," he added to himself. "Okay. Let's see."

"Jim!" Deb came rushing down the stairs. "Jim! Daddy! I think you should come up here."

"What is it, Bumpkin?"

"Aunt Maggie can't turn off the can opener."

"Just tell her to close the pantry door," Ralph said. "I was sort of playing around with your Mom's soup recipes."

"Soup recipes?" Deb said. She rushed back upstairs.

"SOMEONE IS AT THE FRONT DOOR!"

"Jim! Does that have to be so loud?" Deb yelled down the stairs. "Just close the door, Aunt Maggie!"

"Hmm," Ralph said as he came back to the server. "I thought I turned it down once."

"Maybe you just reset the alarm clock," Wat said. Ralph looked at him seriously for a moment and then chuckled.

"Here," Jim said. "This one should turn it down." He clicked on a metaphor icon and dragged it over to the workbench, effectively "opening" it. Then he looked at all the commands. "Wow."

"Oh, yeah," Ralph said. "I was trying to see if I could get the --" The room suddenly went dark.

"Looks like someone found the bathroom okay," Wat said.

"Nah, that's still connected to the barn lights," Ralph said. "The house lights should come back on when the front door is opened and closed a second time."

"Oh."

"Uh, this metaphor looks a little confused," Jim said.

"What do you mean?" Ralph asked. The lights came back on.

"You've specified a multi-tasking assignment for the burglar alarm; we could end up with a strobe effect, if I understand this correctly."

"Better turn that one off," Wat said. "I don't think the sheriff will appreciate havin' a Great Dane tie up the county phone lines all night."

"I was changing that one a while ago," Ralph said. "We should be okay as long as no one tries to flush -- "

"HALT! DO NOT MOVE!"

"Didn't get the volume right, Jim," Wat said.

"I'd better go see who's stuck in the guest bath," Ralph said. He couldn't hide the anxiety on his face.

"Just exactly how bad can this get?" Wat asked Jim when they were alone.

"Well," Jim said slowly. "We can always shut down the server, but then we'll be without lights."

"You don't want that," Wat said. "Maggie'd never let you hear the end of it. She's a good woman an' all, but she don't like havin' a house turned upside down by a bunch of computers. Won't let me put in the automatic door openers and stuff."

"Uh, I could switch over to the old server," Jim said. "As long as people don't go upstairs, we should be okay."

"Better try that."

"Okay."

Jim quickly checked the cabling between the two servers. "It's sort of ready. We'll be in the dark for a few seconds until I switch the cables. Unless I can reverse the backup wiring and make this server fail."

"Will we be in the dark? I don't think you're gonna find them cables easy to change without any light."

"You have a point." Jim quickly moved behind the worktable and pulled some cables out of the two servers. "I'll just reverse the backup sequence and when we crash the main server the old one will kick in."

He did just that and there was never a flicker in the lights. "Now we'll bring up the new server and set it to kick in if the old one fails."

"Don't you need to fix the server after a crash?"

"Sure, but we can leave a diagnostic running," Jim said. "As long as we can keep everyone downstairs, we'll be okay."

"I hope," Wat said. "Ralph's changed everything since I was last down here."

*

There were quite a few people sitting in the living room when Jim and Wat got back upstairs. Stephie took Jim around and introduced him, but he forgot the names as quickly as he heard them. Aunt Maggie was sipping on a fruit cocktail as Jim finally sat down between her and Deb on the couch.

"I sort of like the pantry and the can opener," Maggie said. "It's a sensible connection if you've a mind to wire your house up like some mad scientist."

"Maggie!" Stephie said. "It's not all that bad. And believe me, it's very, very helpful when you've an armload of packages or groceries to not have to open all those doors."

"Hey!" someone said from the hallway. "I can't get in here."

"Where are you?" Jim said.

"Tryin' to get into the guest bath!"

"Jim!" Deb said. "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything! Sort of."

Ralph came thumping down the stairs. He had changed his clothes, but he was clearly in distress because one shirt tail was still hanging from his slacks. "Don't anyone go outside! The sprinklers are running."

"I left my windows rolled down!"

"Jim! You've got to do something!" Deb took Jim by the arm and led him over to the cellar stairs. "Don't you DARE let this house hurt my family!"

"Calm down, honey, it's not like in the movies!"

"Is it cold in here?" Stephie asked. "It sounds like the air conditioner is running."

"It's going to freeze us to death!"

"Deb, I'll take care of it."

"I'm coming with you."

"Honey, it's not that bad."

"RALPH!" Aunt Maggie was screaming. "RALPH! The microwave is counting down!"

"Okay. It may get a little worse."

"Just fix it!"

"I'll have to switch the servers back." They rushed downstairs and Jim pulled the power plug on the old server. The door to the cellar slammed shut and the lights went out.

"Jim."

"Don't worry, Deb. The new server should come back on any minute now."

"It's dark down here."

"No, just come around to the monitor, honey." Deb came to stand behind Jim. She smelled faintly of strawberries and he found himself wishing he could just ignore the computers for a few minutes. Deb leaned over to look at the screen, brushing gently against him. Except for the fact she was ready to strangle him, it seemed a very romantic moment to him.

"What is it doing?"

"Running a diagnostic. We can stop all the metaphors once that finishes."

"How long will that take?"

"Well, it has to check the hard drives. These models can run from their RAM as long as they don't have to go to disk. Maybe half an hour?"

"My family is at the mercy of this thing for half an hour?"

"Sort of."

Deb sighed. "Daddy does it again."

"You're not mad at me?"

"No, I guess not." She put her arms around him and kissed him on the head. "I just wanted you to make a really good impression on everyone. Now we're trapped in Daddy's shop and who knows what is happening upstairs?"

"Well, I guess I could cancel the diagnostic. The server may not have been using the hard disk when I crashed it."

"Is that risky?"

"Not very."

"Okay. Let's see what happens."

The diagnostic had so far found nothing wrong when Jim interrupted it. The metaphor manager came back up and a list of about thirty metaphors flashed on the screen. Jim took Deb by the hand and walked upstairs. The lights came on just as he lost all sense of position.

"Computer: Open Shop Door." The door opened onto pandemonium. "Wow, that's really soundproofed!"

The living room was bathed in strobing lights, and a vacuum cleaner was turning on and off in a coat closet. Most of Deb's relatives were milling about in the hallway and the kitchen, while the entertainment system played movies and music in loud competition against one another. Jim was pretty sure he could hear Ambrose howling somewhere in the background.

"Whooie!" someone said next to Jim. "Ralph and Stephie sure know how to throw a party!"

"Do you know where my parents are?" Deb asked the relative.

"I think your ma dragged your pa upstairs!"

"Come on, Jim!"

"HALT! DO NOT MOVE!"

"Ignore it, honey, the phones are turned off anyway."

Deb took Jim firmly by the hand and led him upstairs. A couple of relatives were wandering from room to room, ordering the closets and windows to open and close; they had to run back and forth to see which command opened which door or window. The master bedroom door was closed.

"Computer: Open Master Bedroom," Deb said. The door opened. Deb led Jim inside and the door closed behind them. An alarm claxon was ringing outside on the balcony. Deb and Jim ran over to find Stephie looking anxiously up into the night.

"Mom, where's Daddy?"

"Up here, Bumpkin!"

They looked up to see Ralph standing on the roof. He was draped in fiberoptic cables and furiously working with a screwdriver to open a black box. The alarm claxon kept blowing and Jim heard Ambrose come out into the back yard to give vent to his displeasure. The Great Dane managed to drown out the claxon.

"I've almost got it!" Ralph called down. He dropped his screwdriver and, with a shake of his head and a shrug of his shoulders, he ripped the cables out of the box. The alarm claxon stopped, though Ambrose continued baying at the sky.

"Okay, dear, I'll come down through the attic!" Ralph said. "I want to check those switch boxes."

"Do you need any help?" Jim asked.

"No, no!" Ralph said. "But if you could check the barn, I'd appreciate it."

"The barn," Jim said, looking down at Ambrose. The Great Dane was now barking furiously.

"I'll go with you," Deb said.

"You'd better," Stephie agreed. "I don't think the cats are in the mood for company."

*

Ambrose calmed down when Jim and Deb came out to him; he reared up and licked Jim's face several times before Deb could call him off. Jim wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve before going on. "Just what did your Mom mean about the cats?"

"Don't worry. Ambrose probably ran them all off."

"How many do your parents have?"

"Fifteen, when the neighbors' cats don't come by."

Deb opened the barn door and led Jim inside. The barn was well-lit but obviously long disused for any normal barn-like function. There was a stack of crates in the center of the floor and a small room off to one side that must have held tack at one time. Jim looked in there and saw a computer and monitor set up.

"Your dad sure likes computers."

"This one runs the sprinklers in the woods."

"Why does your dad have sprinklers in the woods?"

"Well, they used to be the fields. But now he has a septic treatment plant out there that sprays the trees; he says it makes them grow faster."

"Right. I guess everything is okay here."

"Good; we can go back inside," Deb said.

When they came back to the yard, Jim and Deb saw the house lights were back on; the sprinklers in the front yard had stopped as well, and a couple of cars were pulling off into the night. But just as they reached the back door, a thunderous explosion shattered the night air; Jim grabbed Deb and flung her to the ground, doing his best to cover her.

The house was filled with screams and the sounds of machine gun fire. Another explosion thundered through the night air and sirens began to wail. "Jim! Get off me."

"Sorry."

They went inside and found a half dozen people sitting in the living room, watching a war movie. The sound was deafening, and then suddenly it fell off to just the barest whisper. "That thing only knows two volume settings," Maggie complained.

"I'll fix it in the morning," Ralph promised. He sounded tired.

"We have church in the morning," Stephie said.

"First thing."

"What were you two doing?" Wat asked Jim and Deb.

"Just enjoying the night air," Jim said.

"Is everybody okay?" Deb asked.

"Fine, Bumpkin. By the way, you'll have to sleep in the other guest room, tonight; your vanity lights blew out and there's glass all over your room."

"Daddy!"

"I'll fix it in the morning, Bumpkin."

Jim pulled Deb away from her family and led her outside. Ambrose sat on the back patio gazing intently at the barn. Jim leaned back against the porch rail, taking Deb into his arms.

"I am so, so sorry I dragged you out here, Jim. This weekend has been a total disaster."

Jim chuckled, nuzzling her. "No it hasn't. You were right, honey. I DO like your father."

"Do you really mean that, Jim?"

"Yeah. Let's come back out here next weekend. Maybe I can help put things back together."

"You don't know my father, Jim. That could take a lifetime."

"I know." Deb smiled at him and Jim kissed her gently, letting his passion chase away all thoughts of computers. Somewhere in a tool shed by the barn, the computers set off Ralph's fireworks, and Ambrose covered his ears with his paws, whimpering slightly.

The End

SPECIAL NOTE: In 2009, researchers announced SCRATCH, a metaphorical programming language so simple even kids can use it.